Something Old, Something New

An eventful week.

We escaped the Midwest for a few days to enjoy some sun, heat, and sand. Naturally it was quite warm in Indianapolis a couple of the days we were gone, and in the 40s when we returned. Such is life in the Midwest in March…

While we were away I at long last received a new callsign. For various reasons, I moved the call I applied for back in January down to the third spot on my latest application. Two other operators applied for it on the same day, so I don’t know that I would have received it had it been #1.

I did get my new first choice, though. I am now N9KM. More on that soon.

Why did I change from one vanity call, that was only three months old, to a new one? Well, as pleasing as KC9DD is to the eye - it is really fantastic to look at - it gave me issues on the air. That double D threw people. I forced myself to speak a little more slowly than normal, and enunciate those D’s as clearly as I could. But at least once a day, and much more during contests, I would get asked to repeat my suffix, or be asked “was that Alpha Delta?” or some other combo that was not Delta Delta. Nothing worse during a contest weekend than having to say your call multiple times.

During the ARRL International DX contest it seemed like I was saying “Denmark Denmark” every third or fourth contact in an attempt to clarify. One op in Alaska was really thrown when I switched to the alternate phonetic and simply gave up and moved on.

In addition to the problematic double D, on busy days it seems like there are dozens and dozens of KC9 stations out there. While I’m partial to the KC prefix since I am originally from Kansas City, I figured if my goal was to be more understandable, why not drop the Kilo prefix too?

That’s how I ended up with N9KM. Hopefully the switch was worth the wait and helps my voice slice through the pileups a little easier. I’ve given the FCC enough money the last five months, I have no desire to go through the process again.

I got my antenna elevated again Sunday. As expected it was a bit of a hassle. It is an end-feed wire that runs from an old, dying oak tree next to our house to a massive spruce on the edge of our property. This spruce is ancient and gnarled. There are lots of dead and dying branches in it. Many of the healthy (-ish) branches grow towards ground. There’s no part of the tree that will provide an easy-to-access support for a wire.1

Eventually I got some Paracord through a series of branches that seemed semi-stable and then fought the cord, the tree, and myself for nearly an hour trying to get the tension correct to keep the antenna from sagging too much. I am not good with knots, which caused some issues. I probably should have asked someone to assist. Hopefully this gives me a few months, but I believe I will eventually lash a telescoping mast to the tree so I can avoid having to navigate its chaotic branch system.

After two weeks away from radio, I was not ready to dive into the phone frequencies in the closing hours of this weekend’s contest. So I fired up the IC-7300 on FT8 to test. A handful of contacts confirmed I was back in business. In the evening I added two ATNOs: Haiti and Greenland.

If the weather cooperates I’ll make my first attempt on voice with the new callsign tomorrow.

  1. A previous owner of our property was an elderly woman who, we have been told, stopped taking care of all her trees in protest when she was forced to connect to City water and sewer services. When our house was built, the developers removed a whole swath of trees and cleared vines from those they left. We’ve taken down close to ten that were dead/dying in the eight years we’ve been here. I believe only four original ones are left and each is in some level of distress. ↩︎